Chapter 108
A Day of Discovery

She had been looking forward to this day all week and the thing that only made her even more excited was the awareness that somewhere in the city there was someone who was equally excited if not more. And finally, it came. On Thursdays, Maya only had class in the morning, and so, right after lunch, she left the university and drove on to the Buckley house for what was to be her first 'class' with Stella.

There were so many things she wanted to do with her, so many projects that ran through her mind, and it was just impossible to pull them apart and pick one, like they were all just shouting over each other, waving their hands in the air to get her attention. Finally, she'd talked the issue over with Diana and Farah over lunch a couple days back, and they had helped her to see what she needed to do, which was what she would have known to do anyway, if she hadn't been so overcrowded with possibilities. This was day one, and it would be the first time she got to just stop and spend time with the girl. Sure, they'd interacted several times out at the store, and she'd been to her house the one time in order to even set this thing up with her parents, but that wouldn't be the same as this and she knew it. So, today would be about them getting to know each other better, even as she got a new impression of who Stella Buckley was, especially as an artist.

She was greeted by Mr. Buckley at the door. He was in the middle of a phone call, though as he spoke to whoever was on the line his face read 'hello, welcome, we're so happy you're here' and 'she's upstairs, turn left.' Maya gave him a smile and a nod before moving toward the stairs. Her immediate impressions of the Buckley house, between the last time she'd been here and today, was that it was very simply a home. Whatever concept they may have had of a celebrity's house, this one felt like a family home more than anything you'd see in a style magazine.

That wasn't to say that the place lacked in anything, not in the slightest. It was very impressive on the whole, but not so much as to feel out of place or like you needed to take your shoes off or be extra careful not to break anything. That had been the kind of impression she'd had the first time she'd walked into the Zvolensky house, and she couldn't say who had more money between Sophie's mother and Stella's, but she'd venture they weren't that far off.

Going up the stairs, Maya looked to the photos on the wall, showing various stages in the growth of the Buckley family, from a couple of newlyweds to parents of one, then two, three, and eventually six daughters. The closer they got to the present, there were more pictures where it was only Stella and her parents, or Stella on her own, reflecting the fact that her sisters did not live here in Texas with their parents and their little sister. Every instance of Stella in the photos, which really consumed the whole of that wall, would show who she'd been over the years. She'd been a tiny kid full of energy, if the images were any clue, and then as she grew her temperament shifted, to something more introspective. She had the eyes of someone who loved to take in the world… from the comfort of her own place in it. She might not have done so well with too many people around her, looking at her.

At the top of the stairs, Maya turned left, as instructed, and down the hall she spotted a door. As a further showing of how her parents let her be who she wanted to be at every turn, her bedroom door had been hand painted, top to bottom, corner to corner, until it looked like it might have been a portal into another world. Maya stopped to stand in front of it and observed it, to the point where she almost forgot where she was and what she was here for. She was taken out of her reverie when the door opened, and a startled Stella stopped with a gasp and smiled when she saw it was her.

"Hi!" Maya laughed. "Sorry, I was just…" she pointed to the door. Even the handle was different than those on the other doors. This one had a proper ornate knob where the others had swooping handles. "When did you do this?"

"Two summers ago," Stella revealed. "We took it off the hinges and put it down on the floor, on a mat so I wouldn't get paint everywhere." By the way her eyes ticked around her bedroom floor when she said this, Maya had a feeling she hadn't always been successful in this endeavor with all her projects.

"That is my kind of ambition," Maya nodded approvingly, which made Stella's face light up. "Closest thing I have to this," Maya went on as she pulled out her phone and searched out a photo. She turned it over to the girl, and Stella was in awe as she observed the painted tree back on her bedroom wall.

The picture was from when she'd freshened up the whole thing. She was particularly happy with the little birds she'd added, in the tree and flitting around nearby. It also featured the boys, standing there the both of them, looking up at the big tree. Elliott had been coming into the room ever since they'd removed the crib, looking like he felt that something was missing but at the same time loving to get closer to the tree. And Noah, for having seen both this tree and the Kermit tree in the nursery from the vantage point of the cribs, looked stunned to see them from below.

"They're so cute," Stella reflected, indicating the boys.

"They are that," Maya happily agreed. "But today is not about them or my tree," she finally reminded them both as she put her phone away. "So, what are we working with? Give me the tour of Stella World."

She happily obliged. Already her room felt like a world in and of itself, the world of a thirteen-year-old home-schooled artist who had traveled the world alongside her famous mother before settling down here, about three years back. She loved to learn, to try new things, especially when those things were new mediums. And yet it felt like something was missing, like this wasn't the space where she'd create everything. Where were the materials, all the things she'd stock up on at the store? Then she spotted another painted door, two of them, which seemed to slide off from the middle.

This bedroom came with a walk-in closet that felt like it could almost have been a separate bedroom in and of itself, complete with a window. But rather than to have it house clothes, and shoes, and accessories, and any number of items one would hide away in there, it was like something halfway between an art studio and a supply closet to rival the stock room at the store. The floor was covered in a splattered tarp on which sat an easel holding a canvas, a painting in progress.

"I… I like the way you think," Maya pointed around. She didn't mean to be the one gobsmacked here today, but here they were. Stella gave a shy smile, hands grasped at the sleeves wrapped around her fingers. "If I ever redo any murals, I might need to call you in," Maya added, and she got a decisive nod in response. "So, what's the story here?" she asked as she went and sat at the table in the main room. It was set in front of the window, with two chairs on opposite sides and was stacked with enough objects to suggest this was where Stella would work with her tutor.

"About my room?" Stella asked, sitting as well. Maya nodded and the girl looked around. "Well… When they said we were going to move out here, I didn't want to have to leave my old room, where we lived in LA. We were always gone when my mom would have a new movie, so we weren't there all the time, but… I guess…"

"You were there the most time," Maya provided, and Stella nodded.

"But they promised that when we got here, I'd be alright. First time we came to visit the house, they said I could pick out whatever room I wanted. So, I went around, looked at the other rooms. Then I found this one, and it had that," she pointed back to the closet. "I just sat in there for a while and… you know when you get an idea, when you can just see something come together in here?" she pointed to her head, to her eyes…

"Oh, yeah," Maya assured her. "So, you made it your sanctuary." Stella nodded. "Sometimes I kind of feel that way about our attic. The house didn't have one when we moved in. There was going to be, a long time ago, but it never happened. Now it does and, when I stand up there, I can see far in the distance… the land on one side, the lake in the other…" Stella looked like she could picture it all in her head already, and it was wonderful. Maya knew right there that she only ever needed to focus on that, as they moved forward, and she'd always know exactly what they needed to do next.

X

While Maya was at the Buckley house that afternoon, Lucas was back at the university, sitting what was undoubtedly his longest and most tedious class for the current semester. By the time he got out of there, he was in dire need of fresh air… and food. He was exceptionally glad that he wasn't alone in this search. His newfound group, built up of Garrett and Carmen, was all of a day old, but it was like all at once they had established themselves as a unit, after the previous day's encounter. Every class they'd shared, either two or all three of them together, they had done so sitting next to each other or one behind the other, as the seats permitted. They stuck around one another, chatted about this and that as they went… Lucas could foresee hours where they'd sit in the library, working away, maybe hang out away from the university… Trying very hard not to play matchmaker too much…

To look at the pair of them though, Lucas wasn't sure he'd even need to work that hard if he tried it… or at all. In just one day he had been able to see how Garrett and Carmen interacted with one another and the impression he was left with was that there was definitely something. Potential, he'd say. It had been one thing for Garrett to get a bit mesmerized at the sight of their new classmate, but he wasn't the type to rest all merit on looks and looks weren't all that Carmen brought to the table. Her character seemed on the whole to stand in opposition of a lot of what made Garrett who he was, but then that wasn't always a bad thing was it? And in this case, just maybe, it was in the way where those differences went and complimented each other. Whatever he'd thought of her initially, he was finding so much more of her to like, the more time they spent together.

And on the other side, there was Carmen, who looked the type to find no reason whatsoever to conceal a damned thing about what she thought of a person. If she liked you, she showed it. If she didn't like you, you would be aware. If she thought someone was right or wrong, she would say it. If Lucas had to categorize how Carmen responded to Garrett's presence in her life, he would say she was intrigued by him, like maybe for the first time in a long time here was someone who she didn't fully know how to be around and not in a bad way, not in a bad way at all, no. She was liking this intrigue, and she wanted to explore it some more.

"Explain to me how anyone can take a great subject like that, and use a text like this," Carmen held up the textbook which, up until the class had actually started, she'd been telling both Lucas and Garrett she'd read several chapters of already just because of how fascinating the authors had made their subject matter. "How can that man be so… so…"

She finally found the word she wanted to use, though she merely muttered it under her breath. Garrett couldn't make heads or tails of it except that the context was simple enough to grasp. Lucas, for his part, knew the word for having heard it out of Gabriela, back before he'd switched to business and stopped attending classes with her and Ariana and Ramona. His reaction was enough to show that he'd understood her, and as annoyed at the professor as she was, Carmen's frustrations ebbed out. Focusing on the fact that they were out of that class until next week and that she was now free to breathe and be with her new friends was a much better use of her energy.

One trip to the café later, they reconvened outside, there to sit and enjoy the air until their last class of the day. After the class they'd just had, it felt almost imperative that they talk about anything else but school or anything related to it. This was not so difficult for them to do, with how relatively new they were to one another. Even Lucas and Garrett, who had known one another to some degree already from the year before, had not been in the habit of talking about much of anything outside of class-related subjects, so they didn't know all that much personal information and what little they did know had come unintentionally in the middle of those conversations. When Lucas mentioned his sons to Carmen, he realized he'd never actually mentioned either one of them to Garrett before, so his classmate had had no idea he had children at all.

For his part, Lucas learned how Garrett had recently reconnected with a twin brother he'd never known he'd had. His brother had been adopted separately, a year before him, and had grown up in Germany. In searching into his origins, he had discovered that he had a twin, and he'd searched for him until he'd found him. They hadn't met in person yet, but they planned to do so as soon as they could, maybe over the following summer. Until then, they would write and call one another and continue to get to know one another.

As to Carmen, they learned that she was in fact a dancer, almost without intending to be. Her parents ran a dance studio, back in Cincinnati, had done so all her life. She'd learned all her life, had worked there since she was a kid to demonstrate, eventually gave her own classes. Ask anyone who had seen her, anyone who knew that world at all, and they'd tell you she had it in her to own every competition she'd ever decide to enter. And yet for all that she'd chosen business school. The same passion she put in her footwork and movement, she put here. She would always have dance as something to turn to when she needed to unwind, to clear her head, but it would come balanced with the work she planned to do. Whether she'd do this back in Ohio, or staying here in Texas, or anywhere else in or out of the country, she hadn't decided. Her family was Dominican, maybe she'd see what she might do back where her grandparents came from.

Lucas told them about how he'd started out planning to be a vet before the plans had changed, how he had put a proposition to his father when he'd made the switch, so that they would work together once he graduated at the end of this year. He even brought up his recent visit back to his grandmother's ranch, how it had gotten him thinking about what he'd imagined he'd do someday, and how he'd held on to it for so long, had been on his way to making it happen. He told them how even though he was one hundred percent satisfied with this new path he was taking, him and his father working together, the better to be there for his sons, he still sometimes felt like he'd abandoned something. It wasn't the job itself, the profession, so much as the promise and the one he'd made it to. Now here he was, and his instincts kept taking him back to Sullivan Stables, and he didn't know what he was supposed to do about it.

"You don't have to be a doctor to keep your word," Carmen shook her head at him. Lucas didn't follow. "You wanted to take care of the horses, yes?"

"Yes," Lucas slowly nodded.

"Well, then, there you are," she waved her cup of lemonade at him. "You go and you take all this knowledge, this very… hard-earned knowledge," she stated, with a flare in her eyes that suggested she'd just remembered their previous class and its disappointing professor. "You take it, and you put some of it to use on that ranch, whatever they need. Then, you'll still be caring for those horses, just… by looking after their home."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners